


Remember Your Almosts

by Artemis1000



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Bittersweet, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Reunions, Thirty Years Later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-02 22:48:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13328031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis1000/pseuds/Artemis1000
Summary: In the run-up to TFA, Leia tracks down her old friend Jyn and convinces her to help her take up another fight against impossible odds. One war ago they had never moved past "almosts" before living separate lives, but what is to say this can't be a second chance in more than one way.





	Remember Your Almosts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thedevilchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/gifts).



> Happy Valentine's Day! I hope you enjoy this story, Leia and Jyn in the TFA era was too good to pass up.

She found her on Lah’mu out of all the places in the galaxy.

Her ship landed at the far end of the field from the small farmhouse and when Leia left the shuttle, she was greeted by an overcast sky and light drizzle.

She crossed the field slowly, crossing rows of neatly tilled, rich brown earth with a scattering of fresh budding green.

Jyn stepped out of the house when Leia had crossed the field halfway.

Leia’s steps faltered for a moment before they picked up again, outwardly at least as steady as before.

“You are alone,” were Jyn’s first words.

Leia’s lips curled into a small smile. It wasn’t quite bitter, though it hinted at it. “I’m not Director Krennic.” She let it hang between them for a moment, the acknowledgment of how much this moment had to remind Jyn of the last time an off-world visitor had come to Lah’mu to tear Jyn out of her peaceful little life in isolation. “I can fight my own battles.”

Jyn had aged, Leia noted as she took her in. Her brown hair was threaded with silver, there were fine lines around her lips and eyes. She still carried herself with the determination of the young spitfire Leia had first met during the chaos of Yavin 4’s evacuation. Leia’s hands, aged now, just like Jyn’s, but not bearing the signs of hard labor as Jyn’s farmer’s hands did, threatened to shake. She busied them by smoothing imaginary wrinkles from her rain poncho.

“You always did.” Maybe it was Leia’s wishful thinking, but Jyn sounded a little bit wistful to her, even a little bit affectionate.

Then the softness cracked as she briskly turned around. “Come in,” she said, already walking back to the farmhouse and not checking whether Leia followed her.

Leia did follow her inside, of course. There wasn’t a lot to see; a table, a bed, a small kitchenette and a workbench with droid parts. Jyn had always liked to stick to the essentials.

Jyn lingered by the workbench. She had picked up a broken ball joint from the pile of droid parts. Her hands had tightened on it so much that her knuckles stood out stark and white.

Leia went towards the only chair but didn’t sit.

They stood there, just looking at another while carefully giving the appearance that they paid barely any attention at all.

Leia pursed her lips as frustration welled up in her. There had never been awkward silences between Jyn and her, back in that other life when they had known another well. “I never thought I would see you become a farmer,” she said, and instantly regretted it.

Jyn started, chin tilting up. “That’s what we Ersos do when we run away.”

Leia averted her gaze. No, it wasn’t going well. Not that she had expected it to go well. No, she hadn’t expected it and yet… She had hoped. Deep, deep in her heart, where she still permitted herself whimsy – where, a tiny voice at the back of her mind whispered, where she still permitted herself to be a hopeless romantic – she had hoped that Jyn would be happy to see her.

“You didn’t run.”

That, at least, she could say with conviction, her gaze once more meeting Jyn’s.

Jyn hadn’t run. It would have been less complicated if she had done something so straightforward as to run away.

“But I didn’t stay either.”

Leia’s hands found the back of the chair. If Jyn could hold on to that droid piece, she could hold on to something as well, even if it wasn’t the one she wanted to hold. “No, you didn’t.”

They fell back into silence.

The hum of the small power generator sounded incredibly loud to Leia’s ears.

Jyn’s floor was tiled, and the tile she stood on had a long crack which splintered into a myriad of hair-thin cracks. Stone ground against stone every time she shifted her weight.

Leia licked her lips. They felt dry but so did her mouth. No. She felt brittle, maybe, and there was nothing that would change that. Nothing except maybe an end to this unbearable silence.

“Are you happy?” Jyn asked. Her voice was quiet, composed even. It didn’t sound like she had to force the words out but Leia had known her well one war ago. She knew better. Or, no, rather, she had to believe that Jyn was still the same woman with whom she would have known better.

Leia exhaled, slowly, paced. _Old_ _Ben says to_ _release your hurt into the Force_ she heard her brother’s voice whisper and tried not to remember that he had run, too. “With Han?” It did come out composed. She pressed her lips together. Inhaled. “I was.”

Jyn’s eyes widened, a spark of shock, anger even… on her behalf? After everything? “Is he…?”

Leia felt the answering spark within her wither and cringe away. She shook her head slowly. “No.”

“Oh.”

They had never needed many words to understand another. In these days they had all been crammed together on Home One and on Hoth, all these times when they sat together and barely needed to say anything at all to say everything that mattered. And yet, hadn’t that ultimately been their failing?

Jyn released the spare part so slowly and deliberately as if it took all the strength she possessed, and Leia wouldn’t have been surprised if that was indeed the case. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not,” Leia responded promptly, though that was only ever half the truth. “It’s better this way.” That was what she told herself, what Han told himself, what they had both told another when they parted ways.

Jyn gave her a sharp look, still too perceptive. Of course she wouldn’t believe a word. Of course she would know that Leia couldn’t simply cut her losses and be done with it, that she always cared too much, kept caring and feeling even when reason dictated she should have long since stopped.

The very fact that she had come herself to Lah’mu when she could have sent a messenger was all the proof Jyn needed.

The fact that she needed to come to Lah’mu of all places was evidence that Jyn was both better and worse than Leia at leaving the past in the past. She had always been.

“Sit,” Jyn said, her voice rough now.

Leia sat and Jyn poured them two mugs of caf from a battered old pot.

She grabbed a stool from the workbench and dragged it to the small table, placing herself across from Leia. Up close, Leia could see that there was a trail of dirt on her forehead and more dirt under her nails.

Maybe she preferred it this way now, soil instead of blood under her nails.

“I…” Again, Leia pursed her lips. Her nostrils flared as she inhaled sharply. “I should not have come.”

She stood up, but she barely made it a step before Jyn’s, “stop,” brought her to a halt again.

Leia sat and silenced reigned once more. She was really coming to loathe their silence.

“We didn’t part in anger, did we?” Jyn asked quietly. She cradled her mug with both hands as she sipped on it, and for the first time today, she looked vulnerable to Leia. Vulnerable and sad and…

“Are you alone out here?”

Jyn’s lips quirked. “Not all by myself. I have my farming droids, and there’s an outpost half a day away.”

Leia nodded. In the process of tracking down the elusive Jyn Erso, she had, of course, ensured that she had no partner or children she shared this home with. The sacrifices she had come to ask for were great, but she was no Orson Krennic, she would not have come if it meant tearing Jyn away from her family for the second time.

Maybe she shouldn’t have come. No. She certainly shouldn’t have come. There would be no spouse to miss her, but what right did she have to tear Jyn away from the peace she might have found?

“The last time I saw you, you were waddling and complained that you couldn’t see your toes anymore.”

Leia gritted her teeth against the stab of pain and clenched her own mug tightly. This. This was why she had the right to tear Jyn away from what peace she might have found. “He is gone,” she said delicately, and before Jyn could say anything else, she raised her left hand to stall her. “Don’t say you’re sorry when it isn’t your fault.” Leia’s voice strengthened and with it her resolve. “I’m not here for words of sympathy. I’m here because I need you to help me stop it. Stop _him_.”

Jyn took another sip of caf. Her knuckles were white again. “News trickle down, even out here. I heard what they said about you in the Senate.”

It hurt, of course it hurt. Leia breathed through the pain and marched on. “You know it’s true, everything. People like those Imperials who fled at the end of the war and founded the First Order, they don’t simply give up. They don’t make peace and settle down to be farmers.” Her eyes hardened. “And you knew that. That’s why they kicked you out of New Republic Intelligence, isn’t it? Because you asked too many questions when nobody wanted to know the answers.”

“They didn’t. I left before they could kick me out.”

“Same difference! That’s bantha spit, Jyn!” Leia stood up, hands on the edge of the tiny table. “You and I know the truth and I need you on the front lines, not hiding on Lah’mu like…”

“Like what?” Jyn barked, rearing to her feet as well. “Like my parents did? Is that what you’re saying? That it’s because they hid on Lah’mu instead of seeking out the Rebellion that the Death Star happened?”

“I didn’t, but _you_ said it yourself, you’re running and hiding!” She snorted, shaking her head. “I’m tired of everybody walking out on me and hiding!”

“I don’t owe you anything! It’s not like you ever said anything when it would have still made a difference!”

Jyn sank back into her chair, looking smaller than a moment ago but still as defiant as she glared at Leia and dared her to make something of it.

Leia forced herself to sit, too. They were too old for her to storm out of here in a fit of anger like she might have done in that different life a war ago. People their age were expected to be better than that. And every missed chance between them could be traced back to keeping their silence and walking away when they should have spoken.

She inspected her mug, like the floor it too held a spiderweb of cracks. “Do you ever wonder what it would have been like?”

For the longest time, there was no sound but the hum of the generator. Leia didn’t dare look at Jyn.

“Sometimes.” Jyn sighed, her clothes rustled as she shifted. “I wonder if I had said anything…”

“If it would have made a difference.”

Their eyes met.

There had been so many maybes and almosts between them, a war ago. So many times they had almost touched, almost spoken of the feelings budding between them, so many times their maybes could have bloomed into more if they had permitted it.

They had both been guarded, too wounded by their losses and hurts to take the first step and risk their precious friendship for some elusive _more_. Then Leia’s heart had been captured by a scoundrel who never let silences come between them and they had just… moved on from what could almost have been, living different, separate lives until they drifted apart altogether.

“We lived happy lives, didn’t we?”

Jyn nodded. “I did. I didn’t have a family like you, but I liked my life and my work. It just piled up until I couldn’t stand it anymore. Seeing the corruption and being told that I couldn’t do anything about it since we needed these people to sponsor our budget, protecting syndicates we should have been taking out because our people were cashing in, too…” She took another sip of caf. “I hadn’t put most of my life into the New Republic to watch it be destroyed from within.” She shrugged with the nonchalance of the rebellious young Jyn Erso Leia remembered. “I just couldn’t keep quiet and play by the rules.”

Leia chuckled, though it came out a little choked up. “You were never good at keeping quiet just because higher-ranking people told you to.”

“Hm.” The sadness had been chased from Jyn’s eyes, replaced by mischief. “You’re still no good at it, or so I hear.”

With anyone else, this would have been the right time for Leia to tell them why the Resistance was necessary and why they of all people could be the one to make a difference.

With Jyn, she simply released her mug and held out her hand, palm up. “Can I count on you?”

Jyn remained silent, her face unreadable. She looked from Leia’s eyes to her hand and back again. Slowly, so very slowly, she placed her hand on top of Leia’s. It was warm, rough and warm and so much like Leia remembered it when she held her hand tight and didn’t let go.

“Let me tell you a secret: we Ersos never liked farming much anyway.”

Leia sat stunned, and then laughter bubbled up in her, at first a chuckle then full-blown laughter and honestly, she couldn’t even remember when she had last laughed like that. It hadn’t even been that funny and yet she laughed, and Jyn still held on to her hand.

Their hands dropped to the table, still holding on, and Leia gave Jyn’s hand a gentle squeeze.

“If I recall your stories right, it should rather be, _we Ersos never made good farmers anyway_.”

Jyn snorted. “Hey now, I told you that in confidence!”

Leia smiled, Jyn smiled back, and for a moment it felt like they were back on Home One or Hoth, with all these possibilities spread out before them.

Then she was back on Lah’mu, older and more tired, with one more war to fight, and Jyn’s hand holding on to hers, ready to stand at her side. Leia took a shaky breath. She couldn’t say why she had ever doubted her.

 

The drizzle had turned into a downpour by the time Leia left the farmhouse.

She took to checking files while she waited for Jyn to pack up her life and make arrangements for the house and the droids. She’d offered to send her a shuttle whenever she was ready, but long goodbyes had never been to Jyn’s liking.

Leia would have waited as long as it took but in the end, it took mere hours until she sat in the pilot’s seat once more, ready to leave Lah’mu’s bleak skies and the farmhouse behind.

Leia went through the take-off routine with half a mind on the consoles, the rest of it taken up by the sight of Jyn settling into the co-pilot chair.

She braced herself, her fingers never faltering in their rhythm of pushing buttons and moving levers. “There’s a lovely lake on D’Qar, not far from the base. It would be perfect for lunch, one of these days.”

Jyn’s head turned swiftly, eyes showing her surprise for a moment before they cleared. A small smile remained. “I would like that.”

Leia released the breath she had been holding. It would be so easy to leave it at that, but there had been too much silence between them when they should have spoken. “Jyn, do you think it isn’t too late? Can we get a second chance after all these years?”

It was Jyn who fed the first set of coordinates into the computer for the hyperspace calculations. At least three jumps before going back to a secret rebel base. She still remembered the rules.

“I have hope,” she said.

Leia’s brows arched. “Hope?”

Jyn’s hand found Leia’s again and squeezed tight.

“A very dear friend once told me that rebellions are built on hope.”


End file.
